If you didn’t read  (Part 1) of this series, you might want to do that, or this blog probably won’t make sense. 🙂

Where does your child fit into the D-I-S-C personality profile?

The ‘I’ Child

Here’s some examples of an I child.

I children are the show. They love the spotlight, they thrive off being the center of attention.

If you are D parent who gets things done, you might be crushing your fun loving child’s  personality. If you are an I parent, you might find yourself competing with them for the spotlight. If you are an S or C parent, you will probably find yourself feeling exasperated at your child’s lack of sensibility.

I children like to have fun.

Telling an I child to go to bed now, doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun to them. Their response will be to try to lighten things up. They might run and hide, trying to get you to engage in a game of hide and seek. They might ask you to read a story or anything else thay can possibly think up that would be more ‘fun’ then just simply crawling into bed and sleeping.

Seriously. How boring!

I children are usually more submissive then D children but since they love to be spontaneous and make every moment memorable, they will act out if their life is to confined and restricted with rules and a rigid system with no flexibility. Kenzie is an I, every night at bed time when it was time to put on her PJ’s she would run around the bedroom giggling, daring us to catch her and have fun with her before wrestling her wiggling little body in to those pajamas. If we engaged in her ‘fleeing the scene’ shenanigans things went pretty well. If we happened to not be in the mood and demanded that she come right now! It rarely ended well. Feeling unheard and forced into submission she usually ended up throwing a mini fit.

How do you deal with your I child?

Make it fun.

Chasing  a giggling toddler around the room every night just to put their PJ’s on gets old pretty fast for a parent, so how do you make it fun?

Establish a routine. A fun routine. Like taking a bath, then reading a story, then going to bed. I kids are spontaneous, scatter brained and ‘go with the flow’ kind of people. They can be all into eating their breakfast then suddenly decide they need their shoes put on right now! Why? They probably had a sudden urge to make things exciting. Since they are scatterbrained and ‘all over the place’ they actually like having a routine to follow, they might fight it a bit, but as long as it has some flexibility, they will enjoy it because it brings stability  that their personalities lack.

The ‘S’ Child

S kids avoid the show. They dislike being the center of attention. They need stability and they will go to extreme measures to avoid conflict.

If you are a D parent, this is the child that you will absolutely crush if you don’t take time to listen to them. They aim to please at the expense of self, so they need parents to stop and listen patiently. They will clam up if they feel rushed. If you are an I parent you might be overwhelming your S child with your constant need for a full and crazy lifestyle since they thrive off a more quiet and stable lifestyle. If you are an S or C parent you might find yourself feeling confused about what your S child really wants since their answers are often formed to reflect what they think you want.

S kids aim to please.

The biggest weakness of S people is this: To your face they will agree to everything you say, but they end up not holding up their end of the deal because they never actually agreed, they just said what they thought you wanted to hear because they have a really hard time saying no to people.

If you tell an S child to go to bed now they will probably go to bed without a fuss. This sounds like a well behaved child right? No, this is actually bad. Every child has opinions, feelings and emotions, but since this child hates conflict, they will stuff down those emotions the best they can and do everything in their power to make everyone around them happy.

How do you deal with your S child?

Value them. Value their opinion. Let them know their voice is heard. Form a close relationship with them. The relationship part applies to every personality but with an S child it’s even more important because they will not share their opinion with you unless they trust you. Ask them questions and give them choices, but the most important thing you can do for this child is to listen, really listen to them. Listen to their words but more then that listen to what they aren’t saying, like their body language, their reaction to things. This child is delicate and easily hurt. Ask their opinion on things then take time to listen. Get down on their level, look into their eyes and make sure they know that you asked because you really care and not just because you thought you should. This child will not be rushed, so slow down and wait while they smell the roses, be patient enough to wait for a full, silent minute while they think about how they want to answer the question you just asked them.

To be continued…

 

 

“We need to be aware of this snare from the enemy, but I’m not saying you shouldn’t be charismatic, in fact I consider myself to be charismatic!” He said.

Charismatic?

What in the world does charismatic mean?!

I snatched Checkers’ phone off the table where it was laying in front of us. We were sitting in a DTS lecture and the speaker had just used a word I had never heard before. Checkers looked at me a bit strangely as I rapidly typed charismatic into google search.

“I wanna know what charismatic means!” I whispered.

This is what I learned…

Charismatic Christianity is diverse, and it is not defined by acceptance of any particular doctrines, practices, or denominational structures. Rather, renewalists share a spirituality characterized by a worldview where miracles, signs and wonders, and other supernatural occurrences are expected to be present in the lives of believers.[3] This includes the presence of spiritual gifts, such as prophecy and healing. While similar in many respects, renewalists do differ in important ways. These differences have led to Charismatic Christianity being categorized into three main groups: Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement, and neo-charismatic movements.[4]

Religion

This is one of those words that gets used a lot in Lancaster county. We are quick to decide that continuing this or that practice would be religious.

The thing is, this is often true, because religion does run rampant in Lancaster.

Here’s the definition of religion as written by Miriam Webster

noun re·li·gion \ri-ˈli-jən\

* : the belief in a god or in a group of gods
* : an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods
* : an interest, a belief, or an activity that is very important to a person or group

However, since religion is a stronghold around here, instead of simply correcting or eliminating the religiousness in our lives, we often tend to react to it. Many of us grew up in religious cultures and since we have seen first hand how damaging it can be, we try to avoid it like it’s a plague!

We are literally afraid of becoming or seeming religious!

I will never forget the time when the speaker up front asked us all to kneel for a closing prayer. Then he laughed a little awkwardly and asked? “Or is that too religious?”

What?! 

Since when is kneeling considered religious? That was the first time I fully realized just how deeply this anti-religion thing can actually go.

This is the part where we run into a bit of a problem because if we are are so set on making sure we aren’t being religious, we are actually being just that.

Jake Kail (pastor at Threshold) says it best:

“Don’t be religious about being non-religious!” 

So we don’t want to follow rules and traditions in our christian walk to the point of becoming religious.

We also don’t want to avoid all ‘old fashioned practices’ to the point of becoming  religious.

The New Problem With Religion

The devil wants us to fail. He doesn’t really care how or with what he snares us. His goal is simply to get the job done.

Whatever it takes.

He often takes perfectly good practices and convinces us to twist them, to misunderstand them and to honor them to the point that they are no longer healthy practices but actually take over the place in our life that rightfully belongs to God.

Thinking that your salvation is ensured by the church you attend is a great example of this, because your church will never save you. Only God has the power to save.

We know the devil is trying to lure us into the religious trap, so if he runs into a person who he can’t trap with religious rules or religious non-religion, do you think he’ll just give up?

Probably not. Especially not if there’s another option.

Why not try to get people to become religious about being charismatic.

This is the snare I believe we are currently seeing in the charismatic movement.

We have come to a place where you need to express your worship freely and boldly or you aren’t getting it right.

To me this sounds a whole lot like…

If your clothing aren’t the right length, color or style, you aren’t getting it right.

We have come to a place where you need to understand your spiritual gifts in order to properly fulfill your calling, you need to prophesy, you need to pray in tongues, you need to…

This is all good stuff!! This is all things that are important, its things that will deepen and strengthen your relationship with God. It’s good stuff!!

However, the way we tend to promote and almost force it on people often sounds a whole lot like…

You need to drive a horse and buggy or a certain color vehicle with the antenna taken off, you need to stay away from modern practices, you need to live a quiet and humble life, you need to…

We are missing the point again!!

It’s not about what we are doing!

It’s about JESUS.

It’s always about Jesus.

He told us clearly that the greatest commandment is love. He told us clearly that we are saved by faith alone.

If we believe and we love those around us with a Christlike love, isn’t that enough?

I think there is always more to learn and I believe we should always be striving to know the God who saved us on a deeper more intimate level.

More importantly, I believe we need to be in tune with the Holy Spirit and live out what he is asking us to do, wether that is praying in tongues, prophesying or whatever.

I believe, we need to teach and share what he has taught us with others as he asks us to do so.

However, I think these are only tools he has given us, for our own personal growth and for ministering to others.

They are not needed to claim salvation.

So the bottom line is…

Let’s stay away from religion.

Let’s stay away from being religious about following rules.

Let’s stay away from being religious about being non-religious.

And let’s stay away from being religious about being charismatic.

 

 

This cutie turned one year old!

When October 4 rolled around I found myself wondering where this last year went. Seriously he was just born!

Kynaston and Kenzie are still about as opposite as two kids can get. While Kenzie was almost always by my side, Kynaston roams through the whole house, he explores every nook and cranny.

He has discovered that if you put the toilet lid up there’s a cool little bowl of water to splash in.

He has discovered that there’s a whole new world to explore behind those closed cabinet doors and drawers.

He has discovered that you can open the trashcan and find a goldmine of unexplored treasures.

On Friday I was in the kitchen when Kynaston walked in happily chewing away on a huge wad of dryer lint. It was hanging out of his mouth, on the front of his shirt and he proudly possessed two fistfuls of the stuff as well.

Where did he find it?

Yup, in the trashcan, so who knows what other ickiness may have been included in his little snack.

Later, I hear a loud crash followed by freaked out, unimpressed complaints from Kynaston, which was then followed by Kenzie’s: ‘HE DUMPED THE TRASHCAN OVER!!!!’

This is a favorite hobby of his. 🙂

He get’s himself into all kinds of pickles and has no idea how to get out.

He was legitimately stuck. 🙂

We put covers over the outlets in our house. This was a big mistake because he discovered that these things can be pulled out, so now he wants to play with the outlets (which he had no interest in before) because it was a challenge to pull off these covers. I finally gave up and left them out, but now he figured out that he can get his fingers behind the plastic piece that covers the outlet, (you know the piece thats held on with one screw in the middle) he somehow gets his fingers behind that thing and tries to pull it off.

He loves to carry around long sticks, like a broom or this swiffer. The thing is it never goes well because it gets stuck in all kinds of places and then proceeds to knock him off his feet. This frustrates him to no end. It’s seriously hilarious to watch. :p

For awhile he had this thing where he would go over to the pots and pans cupboard and get the lid off my frying pan, then he pushed all over the place, he went zooming across the kitchen floor at an incredible rate of speed.

He loves being outside.

Yes, that is dirt, not chocolate. I have no idea where his mom is when these things occur. 🙂

So much baby sweetness. 🙂

He started walking at 11 months old.We had a birthday party for him on Saturday.

 

He thought the cake was rather awesome. 🙂

And we think he’s rather awesome. 🙂

We thank God for the blessing he is and for the crazy amount of joy he has brought to our lives. His first year went by so fast but even so we find it hard to remember how life without him was before we met him.

He has his share of spats with his sister but at the end of the day they are pretty good friends. 🙂

We love you buddy, and we pray that you would never lose your quiet sweetness and easygoing ways. We pray that God would bless you richly and that you would come to know his heart, that you would follow him and live in his will all the days of your life.

 

This is my story.

And I feel like God wants me to share it.

For me its a personal ‘God story’  that only about 5 people know about.

I shared it with only a few people, because back then, I had no confidence in what I believed, in fact I didn’t even really know what I believed. I believed in God but I didn’t really know how I felt about him or how he felt about me. Most times I felt pretty sure that he was totally annoyed at my inability to be a good christian.

I knew that if I shared this experience with the wrong person they would give me 500 reasons why it wasn’t legit and I knew my faith was too weak to stand through someone else’s doubts.

This was my story, this was a moment in my life that God came through in a way that was powerful to me. I clung to this moment and it got me through hard times, even now when God seems far away he reminds me of that moment when I realized for the first time how incredibly much he cares about me.

He loves me for me! He doesn’t just love me when I get it right, he’s not constantly rolling his eyes wondering if I’m ever going to stop screwing up, he just simply loves me, because I’m me and he created me in his own image.

That’s how he feels about you too.

Let’s Back Up A Bit.

When we got engaged our plans were to get married amish. We had both heard strong statements such as ‘leaving the amish is a ticket straight to hell’ or ‘people who leave are breaking a promise they made to God’ or ‘ people who leave are never satisfied, they just keep going farther and farther because they lost their peace when they left the amish church.’

I’m not one to make decisions lightly, especially big decisions like this. I even made up my mind that I don’t know if I agree with those statements but hey its better to be safe then sorry. Besides leaving would cause a whole mess of drama and I hate confrontation so why not just keep the peace?

(Which by the way, we are called to be peacemakers not peacekeepers. This subject could be a whole other blog. 🙂 )

However, God persisted.

No matter how much I tried to convince myself that I would stay amish, I never found peace with that decision. For awhile I thought I accomplished this goal of being satisfied where I was…

But then we got engaged.

It suddenly kind of hit me that I was committing to something that I had absolutely no desire to do. I felt forced to do something that didn’t even make sense to me.

I prayed but found no answers or peace.

Then one Sunday in church (amish church) the preacher was preaching on the story of Issac and Rebecca and how the servant prayed by the well, he asked very specific things from God and do you know what happened?

God gave him exactly what he asked for!

I was sitting there and suddenly realized: This might have happened years and years ago, but if God answered prayers like that then, why wouldn’t he still answer them like that today?

So for the next 9 months I prayed.

I prayed that if God was ok with me leaving the amish church, then he would send rain on our wedding day, and if it didn’t rain then that meant it wasn’t ok.

Seek And You Will Find.

Matthew 7:7. This was the verse that kept me going. Every time I felt like I was never going to understand who God is or what he really expects of me, I would come back to the promise in this verse.

Seek and you will find.

So I kept seeking and I believed the promise that it would pay off and I would find the truth.

It did.

I found the truth.

In case you wondering… the things I mentioned earlier that people say about leaving…

They’re lies.

There is absolutely no truth in them. They are lies planted by the devil to keep people from following Jesus, to keep people from stepping into whatever God has for them.

Did It Rain?

YES!

It rained.

10 days before our wedding I was checking the weather.

Sunny.

They said it was going to be sunny. Not a cloud in sight.

It was the weirdest thing though. It didn’t matter how much the weather guy proclaimed that it would be sunny, I knew it was going to rain. Somehow I just knew it would.

9 days before the weather said: Sunny.

8 days before: Sunny.

7 days before, 6 days before, Sunny.

Yet, I still knew it was going to rain.

Finally 2 days before, the weather guys finally caught on that it might not be sunny. 🙂

Cloudy, they decided. It would be cloudy but no rain.

I still knew it was going to rain.

Then it was our wedding day and it was cloudy.

Then the sun came out.

Then…

We were sitting in the service and I looked out the window…

It was raining.

In that moment I knew, like never before, that God cares.

About me.

He loves me enough to answer a prayer that was prayed with very little faith. He loves me enough to reach out through the fog of varying opinions and show me his heart.

I was overwhelmed with a sudden understanding of just how deeply he cares for me on a personal level.

In that moment the direction of my life was forever changed because for the first time, ever I understood just how loved I am.

He cares about you just as much.

Whatever your battle is, don’t give up because he promised: ‘If you seek, you will find, and if you ask, it will be given.’

 

Did you know there’s a reason, you act or react the way you do?

There’s a reason you think the way you do, there’s a reason you respond emotionally to things the way you do.

There’s a reason you act or react to every situation the way you do, you might consciously choose to react this way or it might be a subconscious reaction but either way it is there. It might be caused by your natural, God-given personality or it might have been learned from life experiences, good or bad. Why you’re wired this way is probably different for each person, but you can’t get away from it.

There’s a reason you are who you are.

The same is true for your child, and understanding how your kids are wired is essential in understanding their emotions and needs.

Your child’s core personality is made up of 7 parts.

• Their first letter in the DISC Personality Profile
• Their second letter in the DISC personality Profile
• Their love language
• Are they an introvert or extrovert?
• Are they a thinker or feeler?
• Are they intuitive or sensing
• Are they judging or perceiving

Even if you understand all that, you are still barely scratching the surface of who your child  is.

Your personality and love language as the parent plays a part in how you interact with your child and will ,therefore, impact their behavior.

I was going to write one blog here, but I think I might break it up into a series because it’s going to get really long if I don’t.

The D-I-S-C Personality Profile.

Your Child will fall into one of these four categories.

The ‘D’ Personality.

‘D’ stands for dominant, daring, demanding… (D’s run the show.) These people are go-getters, they make stuff happen! They thrive off of being in charge. The bigger the challenge the more excited they are to meet it. They take big risks in both their business and personal lives. They are often successful because they don’t quit if they fail. Failure actually motivates them to find a way that works. They often act before they think. When presented with an idea, their question is: “What?” as in “What needs to happen to do this?” Their motto would be: Get it done or get out of my way!

The ‘I’ Personality.

‘I’ stands for Influencing, Innovative, Interesting… (I’s are the show.) These people see life as one big party. They thrive off of ‘fun.’ Their end goal is to have fun wether that’s at work or play. They are often the life of the party. You will know when they arrive, because they will enter with a bang, the whole room will light up when they get there. They have the ability to turn the most boring routine into an exciting, memorable moment. They love people and will be the very ones proclaiming: “The more the merrier!” When presented with an idea their question is: “Who?” as in, “Who will be there?” Their motto would be: If it’s not exciting, I’ll make it exciting!

The ‘S’ Personality.

‘S’ stands for sweet, submissive, stable… (S’s avoid the show.) These people hate conflict. The hardest thing for them to do is say no, because of this they will commit to things they don’t want to do. They dislike change and will do things consistently. They often have set routines that they follow. Spontaneous plans drive them crazy.  They don’t like being left to figure something out on their own, they want you to let clear detailed instructions so they can do it correctly and precisely. They don’t like being in charge and they don’t like being the center of attention. When presented with an idea their question is: “How?” as in, “How is this going to work?” Their slogan would be: As long as everyone else is happy, it’s ok.

The ‘C’ Personality.

‘C’ stands for cautious, calculated, calm… (C’s judge the show.) These people take the cautious approach to everything, they think before they act. They are often calm and can think clearly through chaos. They like routine and are organized. They hate being wrong and because of their calculated personalities they are rarely wrong. They like working behind the scenes. They often seem negative. They love details. They pick apart other people’s ideas because they think every idea can be improved. When presented with an idea their question is: “Why?” as in “What’s the reasoning behind that?” Their slogan would be: There’s a better way, find it!

Who is your child?

Which letter describes your child?

Which letter describes you?

Understanding this can make a world of difference in the way you parent, it will make a difference in your ability to connect with your child.

Here’s a some examples on D children.

D children will try to run the show.

If you are a D parent, you will probably find yourself in many power struggles with your D child. If you are and I or S parent you will probably feel like your child does run the show and if you are a C parent you will probably find yourself feeling frustrated with this child who refuses to follow the rules.

D children don’t like being told what to do.

If you tell a D child to go to bed, they probably won’t go to bed. The very words ‘you must’ causes rebellion to rise in their heart and they will do everything in their power not do what you just commanded them to.

Telling a D child they must go to bed right now will never result in that child obediently going to bed right now, it simply won’t work because it goes against the very core of how your child is wired. You will instead find yourself with a defiant child who is very determined not to go to bed. In fact they are probably so set on it that they won’t even listen to what you are saying anymore, they have one thing in mind and that is to not take orders from anyone.

How do you deal with a D child?

Let them feel like they have options and choices and not like they are being ordered around. Don’t tell them to go to bed. Give them options.

If you want them in bed by 8:00, start the conversation at 7:30, for a younger child, tell them its almost bedtime, at 7:45 ask ask them if they are ready to go to bed now or if they would like to play for 5 more minutes. Give them the understanding that the choice is theirs but whichever they choose will then be carried out with no temper fits or whining.

For an older child you can tell them they can choose to go to bed whenever they want but 8:00 is the latest it may be.

Obviously this won’t work perfectly every time but if you child is a D, you will see a huge change in their behavior if they feel like they have choices instead of feeling like they have no control over their own lives because D’s have a ‘need’ to be in control.

To Be Continued…